The ecosystem services ‘tipping point’: how and when do we shift from theory to widespread practice in the private sector?

Prove it and scale it. We are at a time of rapid experimentation with PES programs popping up for avoided cost, mitigation and restoration efficiency. Policy makers, investors and environmental interest groups need to see how these programs perform, and most importantly, adjust when they underperform, before they will trust that ecosystem services are a viable way to protect and improve the environment. This trust will come when ecosystem services are consistently quantified, reported, and adjusted. Reporting quantified outcomes will enable public and private investors and regulators to 1) understand, and 2) increase their environmental return on investment over traditional grant funding and one-off mitigation approaches. Ecosystem service quantification tools will be trusted when they are routinely improved by using monitoring to increase accuracy, and these updated tools are consistenly adopted without creating regultory or market uncertainty. 

Scaling the model will require stable institutions that take a bigger view of ecosystem markets than any single initiative. While the individuals involved in a single PES program or mitigation bank are under political and financial pressure to make sure there is "no bad news," regional institutions have an incentive to drive accountability across watersheds, habitats and banks. By defining standards and driving accountability these institutions will provide the confidence necessary to allow people to use ecosystem service accounting as the way they make private investment, public investment and regulatory compliance decisions. When we see oil companies, EPA and local communities all using the same ecosystem serivces metrics, we will hit the tipping point. 

Sissel:

A very good question, although I don’t know that any one development is ever sufficient for a tipping point of this nature.  Most probably, like most forms of change, it will take a murky, mix of developments.

But here are three candidates, the third of which may come closest:

1. Someone should analyze the success of the behavioral economics field, not its intellectual content, but how such a radical set of ideas penetrated into the mainstream as fast as it has.  It is now not so rare to see discussion of the formerly “forbidden” topic of just how rational we humans really are (as opposed to what we like to think about ourselves.  See the third point below).  In contrast, fields like ecological economics, for the most part, stay within their inner circle.  Perhaps there are lessons here.
2.  Environmental groups who are members of partnerships with businesses, or engage with them in other non-adversarial ways (at least at times), should bring ES up, educate their partners, and help them begin to incorporate ES into the latter’s business planning and reporting.  Of course, they might first have to educate themselves on the specifics of the field, but they would have a head start if they choose to make the effort.  ES may not be so different from what they’re already doing; just another way to look at it.
3. The debate President Obama and his conservative critics are having right now about whether government programs actually provide the prerequisites for businesses to build upon, and therefore are responsible for some part of the latters’ success is unprecedented, timely, public, and important.  The reluctance of conservatives to come to reject the popular myth of “self-reliance” or the “self-made man,” is strong, but not necessarily impossible to overcome.  It would benefit from a well-respected businessperson, a la a Buffett, to stand up and say “I have no problem acknowledging the debt I owe my public school teachers, the health inspectors of the restaurant I like to eat at, the funding of the research for the inoculations that improved my chances to grow to adulthood.  I don’t see how I could have focused on my business, and achieved success, without these.”  Now, it would be even better if this debate gets reframed around the type and characteristics of a nuanced form of capitalism people would most want to see (instead of the usual “capitalism” or “socialism”, as if there are no other creative choices or precedents).  The ES argument fits right into, and extends, the President’s point.  ES advocates could join in, try to ensure that this moment in time extends (even perpetually), and make their arguments, either under the existing or this new frame.

Matt

Catastrophic Failure.

Perhaps we should add catastrophic failure to Matt's list. Energy policy comes to mind. Specifically, nuclear power in Japan and New York, coal mining, oil drilling, frakking.

There are tremendous demonstrations in Japan over turning on nuclear facilities that were shut down after the earthquake / tsunami / trifold meltdown at Fukushima. Here in the US, the NRC has decided to look at waste management issues in regards to delicensing Indian Point.

Meanwhile, if coal mining was so great, why then is West Virginia so poor? The Deepwater Horizon, and the general state of affairs in oil countries and the apparent costs of pollution in gas frakking areas raise similar questions.